MEMBER DIARY

Why David Frum is completely wrong.

Scapegoating social conservatives is especially silly this time around.

Frum believes the social conservative issues were the ones that lost the GOP the election. That’s just silly.

We just saw California–CALIFORNIA, mind you–passed Proposition 8 amending their constitution to define marriage as between one man and one woman, as did a number of other states. Are you kidding me? It’s California. Yeah, social conservative issues are unpopular… in the NYC/DC conservative bubbles.

No, the social conservative issues triumphed (though it’s true that some abortion restrictions failed to pass) and are largely responsible for getting McCain as close as he got. Many regular folks simply could not stomach Obama’s radical pro-abortion policies.

That’s also why the “moderate” Republicans got decimated this past Tuesday. Which moderate Republicans beat out the moderate Democrats running against them? I’m genuinely curious, because I don’t hear that ANY did. Certainly didn’t happen in Virginia with the moderate Jim Gilmore getting pasted by Mark Warner.

Frankly, far and away the only top issue in this election was the economy. And the only issues that could possibly override people’s concerns about the economy were social conservative issues. You’ll notice that all the elite “conservative” defectors to Obama were pro-choice.

Like I’ve said before, profligate govt spending culminating in the unpopular bailouts destroyed the GOP’s credibility on the Fiscal side.

The SoCon wing did their job and carried their weight. The National Security wing did their job as well.

The GOP failed on the fiscal and economic side, and STILL only lost by ~5 points due to the strength of the national security and social conservative issues.